The canary, among foreign birds, and the linnet and bobolink, among American birds, are familiar examples of the first class; the common robin and the veery of the second; the wood-thrush, the cat-bird, and the mocking-bird, of the third; and the blue-bird, the pewee, and the purple martin, of the fourth class.  It may be added, that some birds are nearly periodical in their habits of singing, preferring the morning and evening, and occasional periods in other parts of the day, while others sing almost indifferently at all hours.  The greater number of species, however, are more tuneful in the early morning than at any other hour.

June, in this part of the world, is the most vocal month of the year.  Many of our principal songsters do not arrive until near the middle of May; and all, whether they come early or late, continue in song throughout the month of June.  The bobolink, which is one of the first to become silent, continues vocal until the second week in July.  So nearly simultaneous is the discontinuance of the songs of this species, that it might seem as if their silence were preconcerted, and that by a vote they had, on a certain day, adjourned over to another year.  If an unusually genial day occurs about the seventh of July, we may hear multitudes of them singing merrily on that occasion.  Should this time be followed by two or three successive days of chilly and rainy weather, their tunefulness is so generally brought to a close during this period, that we may not hear another musical note from a single individual after the seventh.  The songs of birds are discontinued as soon as their amorous dalliances and the care of their offspring have ceased.  Hence those birds that raise but one brood of young during the season, like the bobolink, are the first to become silent.

No one of the New England birds is an autumnal warbler; though the song-sparrow often greets the fine mornings in October with his lays, and the shore-lark, after spending the summer in Labrador and about the shores of Hudson’s Bay, is sometimes heard in autumn, soaring and singing at the dawn of day, while on his passage to the South.  The bobolink, the veery, or Wilson’s thrush, the red thrush, and the golden robin, are silent after the middle of July; the wood-thrush, the cat-bird, and the common robin, not until a month later; but the song-sparrow alone continues to sing throughout the summer.  The tuneful season of the year, in New England, embraces a period of about four months, from the middle of April to the middle of August.

There are certain times of the day, as well as certain seasons of the year, when the birds are most musical.  The grand concert of the feathered tribe takes place during the hour between dawn and sunrise.  During the remainder of the day they sing less in concert, though many species are very musical at noonday, and seem, like the nocturnal birds, to prefer the hour when others are silent.  At sunset there is an